


Another Day to Keep Breathing

by mrasaki



Series: Halloween 2015 [2]
Category: Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Silent Hill (2006), Silent Hill (Video Game Series), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Horror, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Dark, Halloween, Horror, M/M, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 06:04:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5118065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrasaki/pseuds/mrasaki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The motorcycle broke down just as he passed over the bridge leading into town, the quick rhythmic thump of the wheels as they passed over the metal slats turning into one irregular beat at a time. [Silent Hill AU]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Silent Hill movie and Silent Hill 2 videogame. If you're not familiar with the franchise and what it entails, PLEASE note that this story involves disturbing imagery and graphic violence. And, here I need to apologize if you follow me for fluffy and fun stories, because this is neither. I love humor and I also love horror (possibly more than humor); I just don't write horror very often. Weird, I know.
> 
> The plot for this story occurred to me somewhere around Halloween 2012 right after _Avengers_ , but I let it go until this Halloween…three years later, for I am both easily distracted yet also an eternal optimist as far as WIPs go. (Also I fully admit the idea is weird.) So if this feels like a retro, pre-Phase Two Phlint dynamic, that's because it is. Happy Halloween!
> 
> See the end notes for more detailed, semi-spoilery warnings.

The motorcycle broke down just as he passed over the bridge leading into town, the quick rhythmic thump of the wheels as they passed over the metal slats turning into one irregular beat at a time.

It was just as well; the light was lowering and Clint's ass was sore. It was a long ride from where he'd bailed out of the Helicarrier somewhere over Minnesota, a long couple days from where he'd picked up the chopper off a private owner on Craigslist for cash and no questions. Somehow he'd wound up in this quiet little town next to Toluca Lake, where he'd spent a summer as a foster before being packed off to a group home. He hadn't thought of this place in years, but the idea of coming here had popped into his head as he was driving aimlessly across the Midwest, almost as if he'd been called.

Maybe the bike was out of gas. Maybe it'd broken down. It wasn't as if he'd checked the bike's history before buying it, sight unseen. He pushed it off the road far enough to avoid attention by any bored highway patrol passing by, and emptied the panniers.

There wasn't much; he'd left behind very little and his worldly possessions filled one army duffel: a couple of photos, a few changes of clothes, his SHIELD comm, his phone. The latter two were turned off, the batteries removed so he couldn't be tracked. His service pistol was tucked into the small of his back, his backup knife strapped to his ankle. The bow, collapsed, went into the duffel along with his quiver. Cash and IDs went into an inner pocket. 

He slung the duffel over his shoulder and started the trek into town.

The first thing that intruded into his awareness was the quiet, a silence so profound it was almost threatening. No birds chirped, no sound of other vehicles shattered the air. In a remote place like this, known mostly for its beautiful lake and excellent camping, even in early fall, Clint should have heard something. Even a late boater on the water.

The second thing that he became aware of was the fog. A thick, roiling, opaque gray fog. Not the delicate mist of early morning or early dusk, not the kind of fog that poets waxed lyrical about – just a solid wall of gray, visibility zero. Clint could see the tips of his boots and maybe five feet in front of him of the poorly kept, cracked asphalt road.

It was almost as if he'd been sucked into an alien world where he was the sole occupant, all senses deadened to nothing.

Gooseflesh prickled up and down his arms and neck. _Quit psyching yourself out,_ he told himself sternly.

He was vaguely familiar with the street he was pacing up; Midway Avenue. Now he could see buildings on either side of him, washed out hulks with faded signs that said _Sagan's Auto Repair_ and _Mollywood Beauty_. Judging from the soaped-up windows and boarded up doors, Silent Hill had seen better days.

What was he even doing here? Clint wondered. Toluca Lake was supposed to be beautiful, but had he really been thinking of coming to a resort town of his childhood to what, fish? Boat? Lounge around and drink martinis?

He stopped short. There was something lying on the ground a few feet ahead of him, next to a dusty car that rested on four flat tires. 

It looked almost like a body.

Clint looked around. Gray mist and total silence held. No help was to be had. He took a step forward, cautious after too many years spent in warzones where anything could be an IED, wincing inwardly as his steps seemed to echo overloud in the dead air. If it hadn't been for the sound of his own breathing and his boots on the dusty pavement, he'd been more than half convinced that he'd gone all the way deaf. This was probably dumb. It was probably just an unfortunately shaped heap of leaves and sticks on the ground and his eyes were playing tricks on him in the unreliable light, but he stepped closer anyway. Silent Hill was no warzone after all; someone might genuinely need help. 

The hearing aid in his right ear suddenly spat static, spearing his head with pain as he slapped at it until he could turn the gain down.

The thing twitched.

Clint froze. Not a pile of leaves, then. The hearing aid spat more white noise, then began warbling in a high pitched whine without any input from the volume control. Clint cursed and raised his hand to his ear again, but before he could do anything about it the thing on the ground twitched again, then rushed at him. 

At first he almost thought it was an optical illusion of some kind. It came at him in a jerky, spidery crawl, growing more visible through the fog as it neared with spooky speed, all – Clint's mind supplied – legs, legs, more legs, at least six of them, that looked totally human except they were attached to each other like the radiating spokes on a bicycle wheel and it – the thing was coming at him, was – 

Before he was aware what he was doing, he'd pulled out his gun and shot it. It flopped backwards, legs flailing in the air, and Clint shot it once more, just to be sure.

What the fuck, what the fuck, _what the fuck_.

He went up to inspect it, making sure to stay just far enough away in case it decided to get up to more mischief. And that's when he noticed that there were more of them, multiple legs drumming in their eagerness to greet him, a swarm of them appearing out of nowhere out of the fog.

He backed up, considered how many bullets he had versus how many there were of them (not enough and too many), and then the one nearest to him sprayed something at him. He ducked away. The liquid splashed on the asphalt besides him, where it bubbled and hissed and the asphalt took on a soft, plasticky look.

"What the _fuck,_ " Clint shouted, and ran.

+

He ran back the way he came, all the way back to his motorcycle. It started obligingly enough now, whatever had been wrong with it forgotten, and he gunned it back down the road.

Where he skidded to a halt so suddenly that he lost control and nearly wiped out.

The bridge was gone. 

The bridge was gone, and the road ended abruptly twelve yards of twisted, rusted metal over a gaping chasm that seemed to stretch down into eternity.

+

Clint sat in a tree and thought over his options. Whatever those…leggy things had been, they hadn't looked like they were designed with climbing trees in mind, so he perched as high up an ash tree as he could get before the branches began bending under his weight.

He had no idea what was going on here.

There were several possibilities. Some scientist or mad organization had taken over the town and had begun putting out monsters. Or, these were from an alien world. Or, Clint had just gone completely around the bend. 

He'd seen the former before when he'd worked for SHIELD; it seemed almost mandatory that every expert in genetic theory went through a mad scientist phase (or was tricked into one by carefully worded grants and fellowships), and it'd become almost a running joke in SHIELD. As for the alien theory – it'd only been three months since Puente Antiguo and then the Chitauri, after all. There was very little Clint wouldn't believe at this point.

The latter, however – Clint shied away from the idea as from a painfully bright light. Not this, not after Loki had stuck his spear into him and stirred his brains like a martini. Not after Clint had played the good little soldier to Loki's every whim, had gone above and beyond for him because it had been his pleasure to do so in a way that it never had before, not even for Phil. Not after the months of psych evals and the court martial, the hostile stares and the whispers in the corridors that only stopped - temporarily - when he'd whipped around and caught them at it.

Clint knew he was damaged; shit, _had_ been damaged way before Loki, and no. Please no. He refused to entertain even the possibility that he'd lost his mind.

So that left aliens, or weird experiments. 

Which meant someone should know. He pulled out his cell, and after only a short hesitation, put the battery back in. When it started up again, he dialed Natasha. Stark had personally given him the phone. Looked at him with serious eyes, dark circles underlining each like plum-purple bruises, and had made him take it. He'd known, Clint thought. Known that Clint had been hovering on the edge of everything, hanging onto himself and what was left of his life with the barest of grips. Had probably even known that Clint had been on the verge of just….leaving. 

Stark hadn't looked like he'd been dealing with things all that well, himself.

Silence answered him, not even a ring tone, that kind of dead silence that meant that the device was offline, not like when the transmission was live and you were being ignored. He tried again, and this time got a weird clicking noise and then a faint murmur that wavered in and out, sounding vaguely like Natasha's voicemail greeting.

It was better than nothing. At the weak beep, he said, "Hey. Nat. It's me. Don't know if you can hear this, but – " he paused. What the hell was he doing? He hadn't told Nat where or when he was going, had in fact made sure to leave when she'd been dispatched to Uruguay so she couldn't stop him. She was probably furious with him, and here he was, calling her up as if he were checking what she was up to on a quiet Sunday night. "I'm in Silent Hill in Illinois. I – there's something weird going on here. Don't know what. I'm going to –" He swallowed past a sudden lump in his throat. "I'm going to try to see what I can find out, but if you get this –" _Send the cavalry,_ he thought but didn't say. "Call me back, if you can." He paused and thought of adding, _love you,_ but didn't because he did but not like that, and ended the call.

He hadn't realized he was going to go anywhere until he was in the middle of that call, and once he clicked off, the phone's full bars belying the spotty connection and his uncertainty if he'd even gotten through at all, he realized that he didn’t have a choice. He'd had no food beyond half a burger his stomach had been too upset to finish two towns away, and had only a bottle of water and some Clif bars with him. His motorcycle was on the fritz, the road was inexplicably out, and Clint had no intention of hiding out in a tree indefinitely, waiting for a rescue that might or might not come.

He hesitated some more, looking at the sleek phone in his hand.

He didn't want to call SHIELD. He was done with that part of his life. But he couldn't stop that part of himself, that small childish, frightened self that cried out at the thought of entering that town. It wasn’t anything he could put his finger on – only the looming sense of foreboding. 

He laughed bitterly to himself. That was rich. He'd left SHIELD after three months of resentful silences and stares and here he was, seriously contemplating running back to the fold the first instant something weird happened, like a child running away from home in a pique of temper then turning back at the end of the street. 

He didn't bother questioning when things had changed, when he'd gotten used to having people at his back. He knew. 

He shoved down thoughts of blue eyes and laughter lines and a thin rill of blood, crimson against shocky pale skin that had run down to soak into the previously pristine ivory white collar, locked it back down into that tightly kept part of himself. 

It got easier each time he did it.

+

The interstate looped around the lake and the town, Clint knew, and eventually reconnected on the other side of Silent Hill. That was where he'd go. 

As he eased back up Midway, Clint wished for the first time that he'd bought one of the Japanese motorcycles with their little sewing machine engines that were a damn sight quieter than his Harley. He'd always wanted a Harley, but they were unashamedly loud, all horsepower on the open road and wind in his face, power and freedom between his legs. But on this grey deserted street, dented mailboxes looming up at him out of the fog, every parked car a threat, every throb of the engine echoing off crumbling walls, the noise wound his nerves tighter and tighter until his neck and shoulders were one giant glass ball of tension.

The street was entirely deserted. The creatures had disappeared, including the one he'd killed, leaving no trace behind. This unnerved Clint more than the battle he'd been anticipating would have.

He passed a park on his left, the swings swaying arrhythmically in a nonexistent breeze, their rusty hinges screeching, a slide a hulking silhouette that stuck into the sky like a jagged thumb. 

He'd played in that park. Alone, of course; even if Barney hadn't been sent to a reform school by then in an attempt to keep him out of juvie, he'd had been too cool for his little brother despite all his big talk about family and sticking together, anyway. Clint had learned early on that _sticking together_ generally only meant when it was convenient for Barney. All that hazy summer Clint played alone, having arrived in town just after school let out, too late to make friends but not too late to get the attention of the bigger, older kids.

Clint had first learned to hide here in Silent Hill, to become invisible even when in plain sight. It turned out a superlative asset for someone in SHIELD to have.

There was movement. Far off, behind the park.

Clint sucked in his breath, remembering the prone figures that had crawled after him like groping spiders. But these – these looked almost normal. They were humanoid from what he could tell in the uncertain light, lean dark shadows in the solid bank of cloud. He could hear the shuffle of their feet now, coming closer, and the white noise, before just faint hoarse background noise, growing louder. It was doubled because he was now wearing his comm in the other ear, linked with his phone in case Nat called back. The hiss grew louder and louder as the figures moved with eerie ease, steadily, arms held out as if for help, reaching –

A deafening blast of static of harsh, meaningless noise, that rose and rose and in it Clint thought he could hear laughter, high and insane, interspersed with meaningless words –

Two things happened then.

The motorcycle stalled abruptly. A hand grasped his wrist. Heart freezing in his chest, Clint twisted around to find one of the creatures only inches from his face and an involuntary cry of revulsion burst out of his throat. Up close he could see the horror that the thing was, its skin blackened and cracked as if badly burned, multiple green eyes clustered like obscene jewels around one large eye centered in the middle of the thing's face staring at him avidly, two horns like long alien tusks curling out from its forehead back over its sloped skull. 

The thing screamed back, a hellish scream. It wasn't the scream of a human; it was demonic, deep and ear-splitting. The hand on his arm clenched and through the leather of his jacket he could feel the searing heat of its flesh and he could smell leather burning, accompanying a pain so sharp that it felt almost ice-cold.

He tore himself away, screaming, knocking over the motorcycle in the process, then ripped out his gun and shot it point-blank. The central eye winked out, replaced by a black hole and squirting ichor, and the creature squealed and reeled backwards. He was surrounded then, he realized – when had that happened? One moment, he'd been squinting at distant figures in the fog, and now they were all around him, inhumanly slender and tall, horned creatures grasping for him with searing fingers that seemed to leave contrails of heat in the damp mist, all staring at him with those lid-less, accusatory clustered eyes that saw too much.

Still screaming, he worked his way through the crowd, dodging them where he could, shooting them when he couldn't. He used his bow at first to minimize noise until he saw that the arrows incinerated on contact and opted for bullets instead. Best to conserve them for other monsters, where he could possibly retrieve the arrows. As it was, he was going to run out of ammo; soon he'd be resorting to beating them with a stick if he couldn't get away.

He retained enough of a grip on his panic to retreat in the direction of town. Even as he began to leave the little mob behind, more came at him out of the fog, but these were scattered and more easily avoided. The insane hiss of white noise slowly faded as he went, the staccato clack of his boots and the tearing of his breath keeping him company as the town swallowed him up.


	2. Chapter 2

_"Thirteen minutes, Barton," Phil said as coolly as if they were on a mission and he was just giving Clint the countdown to contact, instead of leaned back in his chair in his office, legs spread as far as his pushed-down pants would allow, hand buried deep in Clint's hair. The other was clutching the computer mouse – because Clint had interrupted him in the middle of work – so hard that it creaked. "Hurry up."_

_Clint pulled off with a wet slurp that was as obscene as he could make it. He had spit on his chin and smeared across his cheek. He glared at Phil. "I think you're giving yourself too much credit."_

_"Or you." Phil lifted his head from the back of the headrest and nudged Clint with his knee. "Twelve minutes."_

_"It's not like you've got places to be."_

_Phil's smile was wide and warm. "I've always got someplace to be. In eleven minutes."_

+

Clint came back to himself curled into a corner, rocking, rocking. He was aware of a reedy moan that rose and fell tunelessly and he thought for a second that maybe a monster was in the room with him, stalking him. He scrabbled for a weapon before he realized it was himself, and shut his mouth with a snap.

He was immediately disgusted with himself. Goddamnit, he'd been a SHIELD agent for well over ten years; dealing with weird shit was the first line in the job description. And add 'mindfucked by an Asgardian god who'd only existed before in Norse mythology' to the list and oh yes, 'discovered aliens exist' in the same week, so this should've been gravy, just gravy. But there was no denying the automatic revulsion that had risen up like gorge in his throat at the sight and touch of that twisted figure with too many goggling eyes, an animalistic instinct that must've been what the human ancestors had felt hiding in their caves with fire the only shield between themselves and the unbreachable dark.

But in the midst of the instinctive horror there'd also been a faint kind of recognition, something about it tugging at his memory as if he'd seen the creature before. Clint paused at this strange thought, scrubbing both hands through his hair and over his face. A flare of pain made him pull away with a hiss.

Looking down, the leather of his jacket sleeve had been burned away. His bare arm showed through, imprinted with the shape of a hand, the skin raw and blistered. 

It hadn't been a dream.

And now that he was looking, his hands were covered in a thick layer of black soot, like he'd plunged them into a barbeque pit. He'd have to clean the burn ASAP, he told himself, only managing to shove the scream that threatened to erupt to the back of his mind by concentrating exclusively on the here and now, on the practical and not the increasingly more nebulous _how_.

But even though Clint had been a SHIELD agent for over a decade, he hadn't packed a first aid kit. He should've known better, but it'd been a very long time since he hadn't had free and nearly-instant health care readily available in the form of the rather overzealous SHIELD medical division, and the kind of injuries he risked on a regular basis couldn't be taken care of by a twenty-dollar drugstore kit anyway.

He was in a dusty, obviously long abandoned corner store of some kind, the cloyingly sweet smell of rotting fruit hanging in the air, bags of bread so decayed they were swollen like balloons. A thick coating of dust layered the floor, undisturbed but for footprints that turned into long scrape marks leading from the door to where Clint was crouched, showing where he'd come in and then maybe crawled on hands and feet.

In one of the few things that had gone right in this long, strange day, there was an equally dusty white box with a red cross on it behind the register.

The bandages inside were so old they were practically disintegrating, but at least they were still in their little sealed wrappers and were therefore sterile (Clint hoped). There was even an ancient-looking energy drink in there that Clint tucked away for later. He cleaned the burn as well as he could, hissing at the touch of iodine and alcohol on his raw flesh. He was wrapping his arm when he glanced out the grimy window to the street.

He shot to his feet.

The figure was only a distant blur disappearing into the gloom at the end of the block, but even with the light dimming rapidly towards night there was no mistaking those straight, square shoulders, the dark suit, the military carriage.

 _Phil._

He tore out of the store into the street, the first aid kit forgotten. 

Phil was dead, he reminded himself, heart thundering in his ears. He'd seen the body, touched those cold lips, held that cold hand. Seen the giant hole Loki had carved into him, looked into those glazed eyes. Had seen him buried, even if several people with the right to do so had strongly suggested that he stay away. Had even thrown a handful of black grave-dirt on top of the coffin.

But it was Phil, he was sure of it. He would recognize that figure anywhere. 

"Phil!"

The figure was disappearing into the gloom at the end of the block, and as Clint ran as hard as he could after it, the figure rounded the corner.

"Phil!"

He continued to run, chasing after the elusive figure like Alice chasing the white rabbit. The suited dark figure always remained just out of reach, just down the block, just around the corner, briefly highlighted by the stuttering flicker of a balefully yellow streetlight. In his tunnel vision Clint quickly lost his bearings, didn't notice as the buildings became even more decrepit, their paint peeling, streaks of blood splashed on the street in long streaks as if someone or something had been killed and then dragged away. The sky darkened, the little light there had been dimming in gradual gradients of gray until Clint was running through total gloom as if the world had been covered in a suffocating blanket.

He came to a stop, panting hard.

The figure was gone. Clint was standing alone in a small intersection, in a circle of dirty yellow light thrown by a guttering street lamp badly in need of maintenance. A lone traffic light dangled from cords extending across the street. It flickered intermittently – red, red, redredred – staining the shifting wisps of mist around it in crimson.

Sweat streamed down his face despite the chill, sliding down between his shoulder blades. A deep stitch had set itself like a band into his side. But he didn't care about that, couldn't, because he'd lost Phil. 

Again.

He'd been so close. That figure always just beyond his reach, just as Phil had been for most of Clint's professional life. A suffocating black despair slipped over him, sucking away the last of the crazed energy.

He ran shaking hands over his face. Now, utterly alone with nothing but that baleful, winking eye for company, his dash through town after what must have been a figment of his imagination seemed madder than ever. God, what was he even doing? Running off on a snipe hunt because – of what? Hope? That a dead man wasn't dead, assuming that Clint wasn't simply hallucinating?

Clint wasn't a man known for his patience, even if his job had entailed a lot of sitting and waiting. Whether his occasional impulsivity was an asset depended on who you asked. In general he found going with his gut was beneficial; after all, that was how he'd met and been recruited by Phil, and how he'd found Nat. The best relationships of his life had begun with off-the-cuff, arguably bone-headed, snap decisions. Clint was also a good strategist – one of the best, if he did say so himself. Loki hit the jackpot when he'd taken Clint and not Malcolm; just how close Loki had made it to near world domination had had only a small fraction to do with the jewel in his sceptre. 

Which was to say, Clint knew that this mad dash had been a bad idea. All he'd gotten so far for his impetuousness was his bike left behind, the food and supplies with it. 

But he'd been so sure.

To his intense relief, he found his duffel still slung around his shoulders, and his weapons still with him by dint of being strapped to his body. He wouldn't have to backtrack, then. 

Where was he?

 _Broadway,_ said the large, weatherbeaten green sign on the pole that extended into the street. It swung slightly in a nonexistent breeze, its rusty bolts creaking. It was the loneliest sound in the world.

He walked three steps to the right, just far enough to read the sign for the intersecting street. _Hillview._ Then he turned around, knowing before he completed the rotation what he'd find. 

The ugly apartment building of dusty red brick, worn by time and whatever had happened here in Silent Hill that had turned it into a ghost town, squatted on the west corner of the intersection. A child's pink tricycle rusted on its side in the brown patch of grass out front amid now skeletal azalea bushes.

Clint stared wide-eyed, that sense of inevitability rushing at him like a freight train, caught in the sensation of being thrust willy-nilly into events that he could not comprehend.

15942 Hillview had served as home for five months to one Clint Barton, eleven years old, as much as 'home' could exist for a foster kid labeled as defiant, withdrawn, and implusive. Troubled. He'd been a scrawny and pinched-looking kid, all elbows and red in the wrong places as if he'd been scrubbed too hard with harsh soap. In short, he hadn't been cute; other children hadn’t liked him, adults liked him even less, he picked fights at school and he didn't giggle or make nice. Unable to even pretend to be the kid that adoptive families were looking for, he'd been tolerated only until his foster family decided he was too much trouble for even the benefits check and moved him on. 

But Marjorie Weldon had been nice, he remembered suddenly. Overweight with too many cats, and older than most foster parents he'd encountered, but nice. She hadn't yelled at him and had made sure he ate a balanced diet and combed his hair and did his homework. Funny that he hadn't thought of her in years until just now, even if she'd been one of his better fosters.

And now here he was, in front of his childhood home, almost as if he'd been led there. He had to go in. He knew this as thoroughly, as inexplicably as he'd known that dark, flickering figure disappearing into the haze had been Phil.

To fight this, to keep his booted feet from treading over the cinder walk through crunchy yellow weeds sprouting up between the cracks, would have been like denying the tide. As the black door loomed closer, he thought with equal hope and dread that the door would be locked. If the door was locked, he would – he would just turn and walk away, he told himself, even as another part of him laughed and mocked him for such an obvious lie. 

But the door swung open easily at his touch, as if inviting him in. 

Before he stepped over the creaking, splintered threshold, he keyed his phone again.

Now there wasn't even the pretense of a signal, just dead silence broken only by a series of inexplicable clicks. No Nat. No 911 either, he discovered. Then 311, 211, 411, the SHIELD number for operatives in need of emergency extraction, and any other number he could think of. Numbly, he put the phone away.

There was nothing else for it but that irresistable draw as if something tenebrous in the dark had reached out with a sharp hook and snagged him. Each step he took bled something in him, but he didn't, couldn't hesitate even as he felt the scream caught in the back of his throat like a trapped bird.

The lobby, never a particularly bright or inviting place even when the building had been inhabited, was a dark, brooding place now. Wallpaper hung down in peeled, scabrous runners. Water stained the ceiling in concentric brown rings. Spiderwebs hung in ragged tatters, swaying sluggishly when Clint opened the door. The door was lighter than he’d expected, so it swung wide before he could catch it and it hit the opposite wall with an echoing bang and a puff of dust.

An evacuation map was affixed to the peeling lobby wall next to the elevator, which stood open exposing an empty shaft like a gaping maw. Blood, long old and dried, was sprayed across the wall and pooled at the entrance of the elevator, the biggest splash at the bottom then trailing up as if someone had been caught in the doors.

Clint stared at the map, his heart pounding in his chest. 

_Come find me,_ was scrawled on it in Phil's unmistakable, copperplate hand.


	3. Chapter 3

_Their first meeting could’ve come straight out of a movie, or a cable tv show about spies and covert ops and drug dealers. Because that was exactly what it was: Clint Barton, mercenary, hired to provide security for a drug lord running synthetics out of Thailand to Australia, Phil Coulson on undercover assignment to first infiltrate the operation, then bring down said drug lord._

_It was a bad time in Clint’s life._

_He’d gone into a rickety bar on the beaches of Phuket, thinking only of getting out of that ever present sticky heat that lay on the ground like a wet woolen blanket, to escape thoughts of what he knew was going to be an untenable situation very soon. Clint had taken the job out of desperation, a previous job having gone south and making him nearly unhireable even if it hadn’t been his fault, but this couldn’t last. Marcos was getting careless. Cocky. Arrogant. All of which were dangerous things to be in this industry, even without all the various international agencies after him. Clint knew he had to get out soon, before the asshole dragged him and Nat down with him._

_But there was nowhere they could go; Nat needed a haven from the Russians and a place to deal with the shit in her head, and Clint had used up all his options._

_The man standing at the bar, backlit by sickly, sputtering neon lights that spelled out things like_ Budweiser _and_ Coca Cola, _had one of those pleasantly handsome but ultimately forgettable faces that Clint would normally have barely registered, but Clint was feeling low, exhausted to his very bones. He’d just gotten back from a pick-up in the middle of the Pacific Ocean out by Guam. Due to some very poor planning, they’d nearly been pinched by the United States Coast Guard, jurisdiction in international waters be damned._

_The man hadn't been looking at him, hadn't even been looking in his direction, but somehow Clint knew he was watching him. It wouldn't have been the first time some expat or tourist had hit on him in the hopes of free, anonymous sex. It wouldn't have been the first time Clint said yes._

_He was prepared for the usual dance, of the drink brought over, the clumsy opening line. What he didn't expect was the man suddenly appearing in front of him though Clint could've sworn he was all the way across the room just a moment ago. The man gave him a smile warmed by blue eyes that weren't nearly as lined as they would be near on fifteen years later, and said, "Clint Barton. In five minutes you will be arrested by no less than eleven government agencies operating as one international task force. Unless you want to spend the rest of your life locked away in a cell the size of a matchbox, I strongly suggest that you come with me. Right now."_

_Phil Coulson had always had the ability to make even the most complicated things seem so simple._

+

Clint found the flashlight in the second apartment on the right in the left wing. Every apartment was identical, all peeling scabrous trails of mildewed wallpaper and destroyed furniture. There was still light in the hallway, an anaemic, dying creature that cast long pools of bleary orange light and did little to banish the inky shadows.

He continued to search each unlocked door, not bothering to pick the locked ones. He found, luckily, a gun clip in a dresser drawer that fit his pistol. If he didn't find a sporting goods store soon, he'd be down to beating the monsters down with a length of stove wood. Sometimes the comm and his hearing aid blared that idiot's hiss of meaningless noise, and he bypassed those doors quickly. Once, behind one of those splintery wooden doors, coinciding with a particularly loud shriek of Cint's hearing aid, came a slow, wet thump, as if someone had dropped a load of laundry.

Clint did not wait around to see what might have made that eager, hungry sound.

 _Come find me,_ the writing had said.

He had no idea how many hours had passed or if it'd been less than one, taking one step at a time down windowless hallways that seemed to stretch to infinity, a labyrinth that seemed too large for the building. Time was only a distant memory now. With each step and each breath of the musty, moldy, weirdly papery tasting air, he carefully kept pushing away the primitive questions of _who_ and _why._ The _who_ was obvious, perhaps; the _why_ – well. Maybe it was some kind of code, to help get to the center of whatever weird thing was going on here. _How_ was also another excellent question he was avoiding, because the thought of someone using Phil's image or...or doppelganger, or manipulating Clint somehow to hallucinate Phil, was too horrible to contemplate. 

He came around a corner, comm and hearing aid both crescendoing to an inhuman shriek, and nearly stepped on the many-legged monstrosity he'd first encountered upon entering the town.

The shots echoed loudly down the corridors. Clint paused, panting, waiting for an response that would give warning that he'd been heard.

Nothing. But– 

He turned around, struck by the feeling that he was being watched.

Something rushed at him from the corner of his eye. Heart in his throat, bringing his gun up, he whirled to find – nothing. Nothing but shadows extending into the black corridor in front and behind him, almost like he'd been transported to another dimension, so dark that his imagination strained to make sense of it, throwing up phantom colors and shapes that weren't there.

He let out a shaky breath. He needed to get a grip on himself. He prided himself on not spooking easily, but every instinct screamed that he was being hunted, and not by something human.

It came to him slowly that he sort of knew where he was now, his surroundings vaguely familiar as if something had taken a distant childhood memory and stretched it like diseased taffy, turning the colors and intense emotions of childhood into the unease of a nightmare.

Here. Down this hall, past the emergency stairwell that everyone had used instead because the elevator was unbearably slow if it ever worked, here was the apartment he'd shared with old Margie.

The door was closed, but the tarnished doorknob turned in his hand readily enough.

He took a deep breath, tasting mold and dust – and stepped through.

+

The apartment was pink. He couldn't believe he'd forgotten that detail: pink wallpaper with little crimson rosettes, jam-packed with shelves of bric-a-brac and yellowing photos of long-forgotten relatives, layered with cat hair and the smell of cat urine. The carpet was equally redolent, matted and clumped because Margie hadn't been up for vacuuming, not in a long time.

 _Clint?_ a voice called, and the stunned immobility he'd been frozen into sharpened into an icicle down his spine because _none of this was right._ This was a memory from thirty years ago, there was no possible way this apartment was still here in this derelict nightmare building, no way old Margie was still –

 _Clint? Is that you?_

He walked forward in a daze, feeling as if he were making his way through molasses, knowing what he'd find before he made it to the kitchen entrance, unable to help himself retracing the steps he'd taken as a child.

The thing lying on the kitchen floor had perhaps once been a woman, or dreamed of being a woman. It writhed, all purple veins pulsing with each jerking movement as if it were in agony. There was a patch of black hair on one side tied off with a blue rubberband, now cracked with age, _Can't ever seem to hang on to any, Clint, hair-ties and umbrellas are only on loan to us from the universe, you know,_ she used to say, all bloated distended flesh and – _Clint?_ it croaked from a toothy crevice that must've been a mouth. Something that must've been a hand reached out, a spongy finger groping close enough to nearly brush his boot – and that broke his paralysis. 

Gorge rose up into his throat, gagging him. He stumbled backwards until the backs of his knees hit the plastic covered couch, and somehow that horrible plastic, the way that it squeaked at the touch and was always slightly sticky, released what little control he had left. Falling to his knees, he vomited what was left in his stomach onto the dirty carpet.

That horrible squelching noise he'd heard out in the hallway came again, this time from the kitchen. Rhythmic, wet, dragging noises, accompanied by harsh groans as if from pain. Clint realized he was wet through with clammy sweat, his eyes feeling as big as boiled eggs. He couldn't breathe, his entire body frozen into immobility. He didn't want to see what that was, was very afraid that he knew anyway what the source of those horrifying noises was, terror and revulsion slipping in ice cold sheets down his spine, but with the last of his sanity the gun stayed down. He could not, _would not_ shoot the thing that had been his foster mom once, maybe.

He'd been what the social workers called a runner, his need to belong to someone, to somewhere, not nearly as strong as the conviction that he'd never fit in anywhere. His childhood had categorically taught him it was dangerously stupid – physically, emotionally, spiritually – to even think of hoping for that. It was easier not to want something he could never have. So even if Margie was pretty nice – he always ran before he could find out otherwise.

Trusting perhaps too much that he'd come back after a day or two, she never called the cops or social services on him. He always did return eventually, slouching into the house just after dinner when he knew she'd probably be in the shower or in the bedroom and unlikely to intercept him. A plate of food always waited for him in the oven.

He'd been gone even longer than that, once. Just once, gone for a week. It was days longer than his usual, and he'd ignored the increasingly worried messages on the pager she'd given him. He'd just been fucking around, tracking Barney or Barney had caught up with him with one of his usual idiot schemes, he couldn't remember which. She wasn't his mom, she didn't have any right to tell him what to do, he'd thought in his rebellious, illogical pre-adolescent mind, resentful because the justifications couldn't chase away the lingering sense of guilt. 

He had come back later than the usual time. He'd made his way into the apartment, tensed for a confrontation – maybe the final one in which she'd tell him she was sending him away – until he had come into the kitchen and found her on the floor.

She'd been dead for a while.

+

Clint didn't know how he made it to the door. The distance from the living room couch to the front door felt as wide as a football field instead of a matter of feet, his flesh crawling at the anticipation of a dead, rotting hand coming down on his back. Every step felt like he was clawing through molasses, every movement weighted down with lead as if he were caught in a nightmare. He'd never had a dream or nightmare this realistic though; so real that he could smell the iron tang of the corroded doorknob or could feel the rough patches of rust under his fingers, the resistance of the old, swollen door as he yanked at it with increasing desperation and it wouldn't budge. There was a warm, fetid breath on his ear and any moment now whatever it was, whatever it had been, was going to yank him backwards into the stinking depths of the kitchen. Then he realized that the door was locked. 

He practically fell out into the corridor.

He was sobbing as he crabbed backwards until his back hit the opposite wall. The door swung slowly shut with a thud of finality and heavy, dead wood. 

Clint wasn't a man who cried easily. He cried not out of shock or even disgust, but sorrow. He'd seen the depths of the ugliness of humanity and that, he could deal with. But Margie had been one of the few adults who'd cared for a scared, angry child who had no one left to do so, who'd died alone and in pain because he'd been – ungrateful. He hadn't been there when he'd been needed the most, absent when actually wanted. And the worst part was, he'd _forgotten._ Maybe he'd wanted to forget, just as he'd wanted to leave Phil behind and the way he'd blown up his own life all by himself, and what did that say about him? 

Maybe this was a nightmare. Maybe he had gone insane. He no longer knew if it mattered.

Clint curled up in the stinking, dusty corridor, and closed his eyes. 

+

_The first time they had sex, Phil had two broken fingers, his hair was singed, and they both smelled strongly of cordite and smoke. Phil had pulled Clint's fat out of the fire more than once, in just as dramatic fashion as the first time, but this save – not that it'd go far in balancing the ledger – had been Clint's. Someone had given away the safehouse. Phil's mistake, the first Clint's ever seen him make, was sticking around a little too long to make sure the assets were safely heading to the extraction point. Nobody was perfect, of course._

_Phil sat on the bed, shirt off, wincing as Clint skimmed his fingers over his ribs, testing for mushy or tender spots, biting back the rage that threatened to boil over like corrosive poison. Instead, he'd pressed his lips to the curve of Phil's shoulder, doing it again when Phil said his name quietly, almost questioningly. But Phil hadn't stopped him, had looked at him with clear blue eyes when he finally pulled back, and given him that warm crinkling of eyes that was his true smile. Without another word, he tugged Clint over, sliding his splinted hands up Clint's arms over the stained armguard into the sleeves of his t-shirt._

_They'd come with foreheads pressed together, mingled breaths sour from adrenaline, surging against each other in halting rhythm as Clint tried to be gentle in his desperate need to touch and Phil urged him on. His hands gripped Clint's hips, murmuring words low and urgent. Clint wouldn't hear that voice over the comms for months afterwards without going instantly hard._

_Afterwards Phil had kissed him, intimately slow, come sticky and cooling on their bellies and half open pants, tongue heavy in his mouth. Clint half expected him to pull away immediately, to pull on the mask of pleasant competency he wore like a second skin. It wouldn't have been the first time that Clint had to take what he could get. But Phil had simply gone on kissing him, like there was nowhere else they had to be._

_Falling in love, falling into a relationship, had never been easier._

+

Clint grew slowly aware of footsteps in that dusty, iron-smelling hallway, a sound that he knew as intimately as the owner himself, of dirt and rubble gritting under textured soles of shoes that looked immensely impractical at first glance. He scrubbed his sleeve across his face. The achingly familiar smell of aftershave followed each echoing footfall, bringing with it not fear, not grief, not regret, but numb acceptance. 

It didn't matter anymore what was happening in this town. Maybe he'd had an accident on the road and was lying in a coma somewhere. Maybe he was dead. Maybe he was in hell – trapped in a nightmare of his own making, haunted by his sins. If this was to be his penance, so be it.

He kept his eyes closed as the presence drew closer, comm and hearing aid now silent except for a subsonic murmuring that was almost a sobbing, too low to make out discernable words. The dry, unhurried footfalls drew closer, then stopped in front of him, a man-shaped shadow that he could see through his closed eyelids, could sense with every nerve, standing there inhumanly still. 

A disembodied voice breathed his name, but he knew with every fibre of his being that he must not answer.

Clint waited.

He didn't feel it move. A light touch feathered over his face then, tracing his brow, his cheekbone, down to his lips – then, to his surprise, a kiss. The feel was strange and _wrong,_ but also, disquietingly, not unwelcome.

Alarms went off dimly at the back of his mind even as he moaned, opening up to it, loathing twining with a lust that snatched his breath in its intensity. Because this was Phil, yet was not, as if something else were wearing his skin. But he couldn't drag himself away, the kiss intensifying into too-sharp teeth scraping his tongue, ripping at his lips, filling his mouth with the iron taste of blood, what felt like claws drawing sharp lines of pain up his cheeks. Any second now, surely, he would scream, would recover control of his limbs and fight – but he remained frozen, in vacant, sucked-out silence while his mind scrabbled at the immobilized prison of his body.

Then everything…stopped. 

Clint's eyes flew open.

He was outside. The pallid light that made it through the gray fog made it hard to judge the time, but it was still daylight. He spun in a frantic circle, panting. He was alone, on the outskirts of town, the road whole and unbroken; completely alone but for his motorcycle beside him, panniers full, weapons undisturbed.

It was as if nothing had happened. As if he'd hallucinated the entire thing. 

For a moment he let himself believe it. 

There was a sodden footstep just out of sight in the looming cloud bank behind him, and out of the static blaring out of his hearing aid he heard one word – _Clint_ – in Phil's unmistakable low tenor, and what small comfort he'd taken was slapped away. The melting terror returned in a hot flood, and he almost fumbled in his haste as he lost no time swinging his leg over the motorcycle and kicking it into gear.

As he left the town behind, the panic subsided, a little, and he could almost go back to believing nothing happened, until he looked down and saw the bandaged wound on his arm, now dingy with dust and smeared with five long bloody fingerprints, as if someone had grasped him there.

Five miles out he got reception again, the phone beeping from countless unchecked voicemail and text messages. 

He kept driving, and didn't look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. At least that's out of my system? Thanks for sticking around for what I fully admit is a distinctly odd story, Halloween-themed or not. Ah ha ha. ANYWAY, UPWARDS AND ONWARDS.

**Author's Note:**

> Detailed warnings: The _Silent Hill_ series is a horror franchise. SH2 and the movie's primary conceit involves the manifestation of the dark, disturbing depths of a person's psyche along the themes of remorse, penance, and (self)-punishment, which I thought very well suited to Clint immediately after the events of the first Avengers movie. In keeping with the franchise, there is a LOT of disturbing, graphic imagery and violence, and no happy endings. But unlike in the SH series, there are no overtly sexual metaphorical personifications such as Pyramid Head...so there's that.


End file.
